Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 95008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95008 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 475(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 317(@300wpm)
“I took care of it,” Charlie said, reaching for me before dropping her hand. “I waded in and just started throwing punches. For a couple minutes, it was a mess, but I think they didn’t hit me back because I’m a girl.” She looked at her feet. “I did my best, though. I got a couple good ones in, and they left.” She huffed out a small laugh. “I have a feeling one of them won’t be fathering children.”
“Thank you,” I rasped out as Charlie looked past me, her eyes filling with tears.
“Sorry,” she said to Kara.
“Fuck you,” Kara hissed back. “Why can’t you ever mind your own fucking business?”
“Sounds like it was a good thing she didn’t,” I said, turning back toward the woman I had been in love with since I was old enough to know what that meant.
The implications of Charlie’s story were almost too much for me to wade through. The fact that Kara had been harassed in school, even though everyone had said she was being left alone, that my brother had left her for the wolves, knowing how life in a small town worked and how she’d be targeted, the way Kara had changed from the bubbly, outgoing girl she’d been to the woman who’d never even been in a bar until earlier that night, and when confronted with those assholes from school had gone white as a ghost—all of it beat at me like a sledgehammer. For the first time in my life, I was at a complete loss at what to do. Where did I go first? Back to the bar? Down to my apartment, hoping my brother would be there? Did I walk back to Kara and make her tell me everything?
By the looks of her, she wasn’t about to tell me a goddamn thing.
“That’s not all of it, is it?” I asked, not moving from my spot in Charlie’s doorway.
Kara refused to reply. She turned on her heel and walked out of sight.
Charlie’s door closed quietly behind me as I followed Kara. I found her in the kitchen, cleaning the already pristine countertop.
“You gonna answer me?” I asked.
“Just let it go,” she replied angrily, swiping at her cheeks as she turned to face me. At any other time, the tears in her eyes would’ve swayed me. I would’ve done anything to stop them. This time, though, I knew the answers she wasn’t giving were important.
“That a no?” I asked.
“It’s none of your fucking business, either,” Kara shot back. “I had a life after you were locked up, okay? Everyone did. Sorry that’s hard for you to take.”
My head jerked back in surprise.
“I’ll let you get back to it then,” I said.
I turned and walked away from her, even though it killed me. She was hiding shit and I wasn’t about to get blindsided with it later. I was an open book for her and I deserved the same in return.
“Where are you going?” Kara called, following me.
“None of your fuckin’ business,” I replied tiredly, throwing her words back at her.
I let myself out of the apartment and stood outside the door, unsure about where I should go. Eventually, I just walked back to my own place. Driving somewhere and taking the chance of being pulled over again for some bullshit reason didn’t hold a lot of appeal.
The apartment was quiet when I got there and at first, I didn’t think Curtis was home.
“Thought you’d be stayin’ at Kara’s,” he said, stepping out of his bedroom into the dark hallway.
It was the wrong thing to say.
The events of the night had amped me up so high that I wasn’t even sure I could speak to him. For my entire life, I’d looked at him and seen myself. My mirror image. But when I looked at him now, all I saw was a damn stranger.
“We’re done,” I ground out, forcing myself to stay put, when all I wanted to do was finish what I’d started outside Callie and Grease’s.
“The fuck is your problem?” Curtis snapped. “You act like I fuckin’ killed your dog or somethin’.”
“I asked you to do one fuckin’ thing,” I roared.
“She was fine,” Curtis yelled back. “Sorry if I didn’t want to hold your girlfriend’s hand for four years while you were locked up.”
“All you had to do was watch her back, Curt,” I replied. “What? Were you too busy chasin’ tail? You couldn’t watch out for her because you were too busy gettin’ your dick wet?”
“I did watch out for her,” he shot back.
“The fuck you did.”
“I did,” he said, taking a couple steps forward. “I made it known that no one was allowed to fuck with her.”
“Well, apparently nobody gave a flyin’ fuck what you made known.”
“What are you talking about?” Curt asked. “I thought you were pissed because I didn’t hang out with her after you were gone. What the fuck are you talking about?”